Minutes after the Mountain West Conference announced Monday it will not have fall sports, including football, I sent a text to a San Diego State football player regarding the news his conference decided to cancel the fall season.
“Just gonna get ready for (the) league,” he replied.
That is now the gut-wrenching reality many of these draft-eligible players will have to face — a fall without a sport they dedicated their lives to.
As of Wednesday, it is players in FBS conferences — the MAC, Pac-12, Big 10 and Mountain West — who won’t see the field this fall.
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has made the United State a global hotspot for the disease, the cancellation of fall college football isn’t surprising.
But it also doesn’t make it less heartbreaking.
I mean imagine the Big 10‘s Ohio State’s 100,000-seat stadium empty this fall…
- It’s only a matter of time when the other three Power 5 conferences will follow suit.
This is a huge problem in college football: the lack of centralized leadership.
None of the conferences seem to be on the same page, though the Power 5 commissioners are reportedly having meetings.
On July 9, the Big 10 went ahead to become the first Power 5 conference to move to a conference-only schedule. Days later — seemingly against other commissioners’ liking — the other conferences followed suit.
A month later, the Big 10 and Pac-12 canceled their fall season, and it’s only a matter of time the rest of the conferences will follow.
One of the reasons for the cancellation is the fact that a rare heart condition could be linked to COVID-19, according to an ESPN report.
Despite losing millions in revenue from not playing football, schools did not want to have to deal with liability issues should their student-athletes get severely sick.
The argument to play football in the fall goes out the window especially when some campuses are open to thousands of college students.
It is too tall of a task to ask 18 to 22-year-old college kids to go to class, practice/play football and return to their dorms every day for the next 3-4 months.
It’s unrealistic.
There’s too much temptation on a college campus to break protocol and contract the virus, and all it takes is one out of 100 players to ruin it all for everyone.
As seen in professional sports, the only way to safely execute a season during a pandemic is in a bubble. College football wasn’t going to do that because it compromises the ‘amateurism’ aspect of the sport.
If the SEC, Big 12, ACC and other FBS conferences do play football in the fall, it is highly unlikely they finish the season without being struck by COVID-19.
- The idea of spring football is out of the question
It has been reported some of these conferences will make an attempt to play football in the spring.
Don’t.
Asking college football players to play two seasons in one calendar year is not only ridiculous but flat-out dangerous.
There’s a reason why football offseasons are so long — players need extra time to recover from the brutal violence that exists in the sport.
Even if there is football in the spring, you can bet your money at least 100 of the top draft-eligible players will sit out and focus on the 2021 NFL Draft.
A spring football season will be extremely watered down with many of the players from the top programs focused on the draft instead.
- Without a fall season, lots of NFL Draft hopefuls will be severely impacted
Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields likely doesn’t have to play another college football snap to be selected in the 2021 NFL Draft.
However, by the time the draft rolls around in 2021, he may fall from being a top-5 pick to a late first round selection. NFL teams may be concerned about the rust of not playing a real football game in over a year, causing them skip on Fields.
That is millions of dollars he would’ve lost by falling that many spots in the draft.
That may not seem as bad when you think of the dozens of other prospects that need an extra season of game tape to ensure their names are being called during the 2021 NFL Draft.
Should a spring season happen, the NFL is willing to push the draft as late as June 2, according to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport.
It’s going to be tough on the non-Justin Fields of the world who would likely need to play in a spring season to improve draft stock — while trying to play again as an NFL rookie a few months later.
One’s body shouldn’t go through that much physical stress in one calendar year.
